Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee: a political ecology of change

This lets us know what we can expect from the corporate sector. They will fund us to "address" social problems as long as the integrity of their world is not affected. No matter how many organic community gardens we plant on the deck of the Titanic, however, it will not change the ship's direction. That power is the hands of entities that cannot permit such a change. We are kept from seeing that by the fact that????they are funding the gardens!

The left-progressive leadership, disoriented by the corporatist loyalties of the Obama government, continues to cling to the dream that more elected Democrats will eventually add up to fundamental change or at least save us from fascism. If effect they are advocating an alliance with a supposedly enlightened wing of the corporate class as a defense against the rising right. They reveal a profound misunderstanding of both. Corporate efforts to crush us and offers to fund us are pursued with the same intent: to keep us from threatening their profit-making racket. We must fight that by directly confronting and de-legitimizing their power. The right (which is also corporate-funded) is best undermined by our taking the lead in anti-corporate struggles and offering an appealing alternative to their message of anti-solidarity.

The internal logic of the capitalist and natural systems propels them down paths that we can no longer pretend are compatible. The unfolding BP disaster will provide a very public stage on which the corporations, the non-profits and the government will all play their parts. The non-profits will urgently insist that this is a tremendous opportunity to shake our fossil fuel addiction. The government will make angry noises about accountability, corporate greed and a sustainable future. At the end of the day the power of the oil and coal companies to get what they want and set policy will remain intact, unthreatened by the theatrics of a mere government. The Titanic will not change course unless the wheelhouse is controlled by people who want it to. The recycling sign on the cabin door may make us feel good, but it's those invisible levers of structured power that set the course.

Fighting for honey

The emergence of a political current that places human and ecological interests, instead of profit, at the heart of social life would be both shocking and exhilarating. Such voices are gaining strength on the world stage but remain weak and compromised in the US. Advocates for the rights of children, for example, must resort to describing them as "an investment in the future" or "a natural resource" in order to make them visible to corporate politicians. Community activists fight to have "input" into development projects where they are excluded from real power. There are increasingly restless sectors of the population that would respond with relief (as they did to Obama, the campaigner) to the establishment of a credible alternative project. Crystals in a solution will form around whatever poles are present in the solution. If the only poles are the far right, medium right and soft right, we should not be surprised that the people will choose from among them. If you don't build it they won't come.

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